Walking on the swamp monsters back

It is a difficult way to travel, tromping through the swamp. Probing the ground ahead with a long pole. Like looking for the truth amongst patches of unnecessary filling. Probing the ideas that might be found in the marshy depths. It is a precarious enterprise. But it is there to be found. Found by anybody who is prepared relinquish any and every thing to find it.


Hidden amid the marshiness and boggyness are patches of quicksand where you can sink and disappear before you know what is happening. Equally dangerous are the legends of scary things. Reported to be there, even though you can't see them. Even if no-one has ever seen them. Legends of monsters that will take your leg and pull you in, and colonies of poisonous bugs and slime that will eat you from the outside in. The legends create a pall of fear which causes misfortune from which few will escape. A sick idea that catches and infects its host. There are as many legends as there are places that the imagination may travel to. Shrugging off the legends as soon as we hear them. Shrugging them off and moving on. The search for truth is a serious undertaking and requires a constant vigilance. Unnecessary distractions are to be quickly and efficiently discarded. It is indeed a demanding task – and we must devote the best of our time and effort to its completion if we are to be successful at it.

Poking our probe into the slushy mush. What will we find here ? A sac of foul gas that erupts through the hole ? Perhaps it will be something semi-solid and unknown that we pierce ? On the path to truth we will have many opportunities to be surprised with what we find. Poking with our pokey stick, finding a path that traverses the densest matter and the thinnest and most vacant nebulae. Not knowing what we have found, knowing only that it is not what we thought that we were looking for. Eventually we will understand that we might never find what we thought that we were looking for. We will always find something different.

Prodding away at the ground before us. What thoughts and ideas dwell here. What ideas are this place made of. What ideas create this scene. What ideas make the trees and plants grow,  and what ideas give off that foul gas that makes us wheeze. What ideas create the water of life and bring it to good use.

Prodding away at the earth, seeing what ideas it might yield. But there are those that extend beyond the earths realm. There are those that dwell in the sky. They travel lightly and lean on people as they pass. They are so light that their presence is often missed. There are others – finer still. They dwell beyond our regular sky, out in the depths of the distant night. In the depths of the galaxy. In the depths of beingness, where time has never intruded.

Poking and prodding amongst the ideas as they lay in terra and the firmament. Probing as we make our way through them. So many of them just don't hold the right consistency. Too hard - too hard, they become like rock and will not flex to fit with life. Will not flex to fit the reality as it presents itself. Too soft - too soft, like jelly they are flabby and falter when tested. Will not take the shape of anything unless they are poured into a container of some sort. Instead of holding firm they collapse when most needed.

If that weren't enough, there are other oddities by which we may be inconvenienced. So many of them are things that we would prefer not to encounter. Things that are oddly shaped and fit only for some perverse use. Flaccid, crisp or brittle, or otherwise of no use. Repellant and/or cloying. Lumpy as though filled with nails. Perhaps leading to harm and away from the truth. With so many faulty ideas, it becomes apparent how few of them are actually of any use. Even the good ones can bring harm if not well tempered.

Indeed how few of these ideas can match the simplicity and sure vision of the heart. The direct penetration of the source. How it is that the heart guides with certainty and the utmost skill, even in the most complex of situations. With the heart there is no random probing. No poking about here and there, looking to see what one finds. When probing with the heart just one look is enough. Right into the centre of it all. All of reality is pierced. Right into the crux of it all.

One can be sure that blood and tears will well up. As if rupturing an artery of it. As if pumping seeming endless amounts of fluid from deep within the earths bowels. Blood and tears squirting up and out, covering everything, there for all to see. Blood and tears and the truth behind everything that we have ever done. All that we have experienced. The truth behind everything that ever happened. The gritty grist of the mill of life. The truth behind all of the convenient explanations that the mind has ever produced. The truth behind the endless misinterpretations that have caused life to become a struggle. That have created pain and drama from otherwise innocuous events. The truth behind the moments moment, and the feeling that holds it all together and causes it all to eventually dissolve.

Belching forth like toxic gases, like flames leaping up and enveloping the self. Belching forth the ideas that we hold so dearly. Staying the course, holding firm the heart. Being steady and still, despite the urge to run. For there is nowhere to run to. Running would only lead to more time spent navigating the swampy marshes, and we have had enough of that. Oh how the heart desires to have solid earth beneath the feet, and yet to be surrounded by space. Never more than when knee deep in the gloop and goo of some boggy swamp. Never more than when surrounded by the ill conceived and unconsidered words of the world. Of all things informed by fear and unrequited pain and all of their various offspring.

Indeed to feel the solid earth beneath ones feet and be surrounded by space. To forget the earth and feel the space above and below, within and without, with no differentiation. On that day the swamp and all of its contents becomes but a memory. Consigned to the realm of the undifferentiated. Something that we once were concerned with, but now seems to strike no resonance.